Posted on 06/20/2005 6:09:29 PM PDT by sionnsar
[Note to the Traditional Anglican ping list: This is really posted only for those of you closely following what's going on in Nottingham. --sionnsar]
In his helpful, and I think godly, presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council earlier today, the Most Rev’d Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, referred to the St Andrew’s Day Statement.
Those who have not previously read the statement should do so. I strongly believe that the situation in the Anglican Communion would not be what it is today had the challenges of the St Andrew’s Day Statement been taken seriously by all involved in the current crisis.
In his essay, “The Only Poker Game in Town: Reflections on the Windsor Report“, Prof Oliver O’Donovan, one of the authors of the St Andrew’s Day Statement wrote (in November 2004):
If anyone thinks that a prolonged exploration would simply hand a victory to revisionists, let me recall that in 1997 a group of British theologians (”traditionalists” as the press would call them) put some questions, chiefly about theological anthropology, to advocates of the gay cause in the churches - hoping for a reply that would bring to clear expression gay thinking about the gay position and so provide something to discuss. I was among the authors of the so-called “St. Andrew’s Day Statement” - and to the best of my knowledge the questions I and my colleagues then asked have not received the first shred of an answer. The Christian gay movement is not, by and large, a self-theorising movement. For that reason the distinctive experience it wants to attest is often inarticulately expressed, and easily swamped by a well-meaning liberal social agenda of championing all minorities in sight, an agenda which is precisely uninterested in what makes the gay experience different. All this poses a problem for the church, since it means that any possibly helpful pastoral initiative risks signing up, unwittingly perhaps, to a dogmatic revolution. In a world where nothing is clearly explained, all cheques are blank.
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